The Indian men's cricket team, which suffered a humiliating eight-wicket defeat at the hands of New Zealand in the first Test at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on 20th October, will be in action in the second Test at the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) Stadium in Pune from Thursday (October 24). India is desperate to make a comeback and not let their prospects of series victory slip away. India's batting collapsed during the first innings and was bowled over for as low as 46, which is the lowest score ever at a Test level in the history of Indian cricket on the home soil. Still, many of the batters batted much better in the second innings. Amongst those who did not shine in this test, was KL Rahul, who got dismissed on a duck in the first innings and scored only 12 off 16 balls in the second. The failure of Rahul created enough noise for his exclusion from the Test team, and with Shubman Gill coming back to the side in Pune, is it not unfair to drop Rahul after Bengaluru's two failures? Where some would like to believe Rahul hasn't batted to his best, his overall number in the WTC cycle 2023-25 is anything but average. He has added 339 runs from six matches, of which one being a hundred and two fifty-plus scores. He started with a blazing start to the season, showing real fight, scoring a 101 on Boxing Day Test against South Africa. He turned out to be the only Indian batter who could reach a score of over 40 runs in the first innings of that match. In the first Test at Cape Town, Rahul could muster only four runs in the second innings and eight runs in the solitary innings he batted in the second Test at Newlands, Cape Town. He was among the third-high run getters in the India-South Africa two-test series that ended in a draw 1-1. Also Read | Rishabh Pant Posts A Cryptic Text on Instagram After Test Loss Against NZ Against England, in the first Test, at Hyderabad on January 26, 2024, Rahul scored 86 runs in the first innings but just 22 runs in the second. He was ruled out of the last four Tests of the home series against England owing to an injury and returned to play against Bangladesh, scoring 16 runs in the first innings and remaining unbeaten on 22 in the second innings. In fact, Rahul was not alone in the first innings as other top-order batters also struggled, except Yashasvi Jaiswal, while R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja came to the rescue to save India. And then, at Green Park in Kanpur, came the second Test in which Rahul made his attacking style utterly clear when he smashed 68 runs off just 43 balls. Performance of KL Rahul in WTC 2023-25 Cycle 1st Inning 2nd Inning Against Venue Date 101 4 South Africa Centurion December, 2023 8 - South Africa Cape Town January, 2024 86 22 England Hyderabad January, 2024 16 22* Bangladesh Chennai September, 2024 68 - Bangladesh Kanpur September, 2024 0 12 New Zealand Bengaluru October, 2024 Though Rahul had proved to be unreliable, yet he is not the only one. Shubman Gill, and even Rohit Sharma have similar scores in the recent matches. So, it seems a bit unfair to pick on Rahul for criticism. Sarfaraz Khan too has been aggressive with bat, scoring 150 runs in the Chennai Test, and he deserves a go. Dropping Rahul after just one poor performance doesn't seem reasonable either. With uncertainty about Rishabh Pant's availability for the second Test due to a knee issue, the team management might consider using Rahul as wicketkeeper-batter which could also see Sarfaraz getting to play in the XI.